I just noticed that Jimmy Wales, the well-known co-founder of Wikipedia, has been trending due to his strong attacks on bitcoin. He calls it a “total failure” as money, and his points are genuinely interesting because he’s not just ranting—he also provides concrete examples.

His logic is straightforward. If you send £10 in the UK using traditional banking, it’s instant and free. But with bitcoin? You need to buy crypto, pay transaction fees, and convert it back into pounds—each step has its own costs. So where’s the efficiency in that? Jimmy the bear is right in observing that this isn’t practical for everyday transactions.

Another angle he finds interesting—he compares bitcoin to gold. Gold has actual use cases beyond just being money, but what about bitcoin? It needs miners in order to work. It has no intrinsic value if the network stops. It’s a serious point that’s often overlooked by enthusiasts.

Now, he’s not completely dismissive. He understands that there is a limited use case in authoritarian regimes where government surveillance blocks access to money. That’s a valid point. But according to Wales, this use case is so niche that it can’t become universal currency.

What really caught my attention is his long-term price prediction. Wales is suggesting that by 2050, bitcoin will be below $10,000 in today’s dollar value—possibly even lower. At the same time, he doesn’t say that bitcoin will completely disappear. It still has the potential to survive as a speculative asset—not as functional money.

With the current price at $77.82K, his bearish outlook for 2050 is quite dramatic. What Wales is essentially saying is that bitcoin will become nothing more than a niche speculation play, not the revolutionary currency that the community promised.

The most interesting part of the entire discussion is the contradiction—he’s skeptical about the fundamental use case, but he’s acknowledging that it will still remain. That’s actually a nuanced take compared to the outright dismissals you often see online. It’s worth thinking about where you see bitcoin’s value proposition beyond speculation.